Merritt Baer

Merritt Baer is Chief Information Security Officer of Reco, a data security company, a role she took on in June 2024 as the company's first CISO.

Career path

Before entering government service, Baer started a business advisory for emerging technology companies. She went on to work in all three branches of the United States government, including service as Lead Cyber Advisor to the Federal Communications Commission, at the US Department of Homeland Security, in the Office of US Senator Michael Bennet, and at the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. She then joined the Office of the CISO at Amazon Web Services, where she worked as a Principal; by late 2021 she had spent about four years there providing technical cloud security guidance to large, regulated AWS customers and helping build the company's internal security strategy.
In total, Baer served in the AWS Office of the CISO for more than five years before moving to Reco in June 2024 to become its first CISO.

Remit and public talks

At Reco, Baer has appeared across a range of industry discussions on cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. In February 2025 she was interviewed on The Art of Intelligence, discussing generative AI applications and the security implications of tools from companies such as DeepSeek. In January 2025 she joined CISOs from Belk and Seminole Hard Rock for a roundtable on priorities in cybersecurity for the year, and separately discussed how a change in US presidential administration could affect public-private cybersecurity partnerships. At the Cyber Resiliency Summit the same month, she was interviewed on building cyber resiliency for business continuity, highlighting the role of availability within the CIA triad amid expanding cloud infrastructure. In August 2024 she spoke with podcast host Rick Howard about how security professionals should approach AI, machine learning, and large language models. She has also spoken publicly about enterprise SaaS application security, including at the Calcalist Dream Team Showcase in November 2024.

Earlier public profile

While at AWS, Baer was profiled as part of the company's "AWS Security Profiles" series ahead of AWS re:Invent 2021, where she described her role spanning both internal- and external-facing security work. Her commentary on business strategy and technology has appeared in outlets including Forbes, The Baltimore Sun, The Daily Beast, LawFare, Talking Points Memo, and ThinkProgress, and her academic work has been published in law journals at Temple, Georgetown, Santa Clara, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Virginia. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Harvard College, and has served as an Adjunct Professor of Cybersecurity at the University of Maryland and at Penn State Law School.